Council Dogma
by cordog
Summary: Post Chosen, Xander's on another roadtrip until one night on a train draws him into the end of the world. again. Crossover with Dogma.


Set post Chosen in the Buffyverse and midway through Dogma.

Standard Disclaimer: Copyrights are owned by their respective companies. I own nothing.

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Xander shifted uncomfortably in his seat, the train slowing and jerking to a stop jolting him into a measure of wakefulness. Rubbing his eyes to bring himself fully awake he looked around, taking in the other passengers and once again pondered why he was on yet another road-trip. _Oh yeah, better a road-trip than another power trip from Buffy. _Buffy was back at the council on one of her meet-the-Slayers-so-I-can-train-them-properly-visits. As soon as he heard her go into her patented It's All About Power speeches, Xander jumped on the first train out of Cleveland.

Buffy was technically classed within the council as a Roving Slayer, which in theory meant that she went where needed to fight the good fight. It was a position of trust as a Roving Slayer could choose where and when they went, with little council oversight. In reality, Buffy only left any of the Council Headquarters when something attracted her attention.

It did not go unnoticed that that something had a dick.

And was usually more trouble than it was worth.

And often came back to bite the Council in the ass.

Xander's position in Council was the International Head of Public Relations. He had teams all over the world that worked with the parts of all the various governments that were in the know about vampires and demons. They were the ones that kept anyone else from learning about the secret side of the world. Any case that the Council felt might be too obvious to go unnoticed by the public was sent towards Xander's department to be personally dealt with. Recently, he had been at the Cleveland branch in order to teach the newbie Slayers there the basics of secrecy while they slayed.

And Buffy, back from what did indeed turn out to be an ass-biting relationship, had come to the Cleveland branch as well. All the department heads cringed when one of Buffy's relationships blew up, because Buffy always returned to base in order to "get back to who she really was". This meant taking over Slayer training at whatever headquarters she turned up at, until she got a whiff of the next dick in her life and left. The problem was, while Buffy was a skilled Slayer, she wasn't an excellent one, nor was she a good teacher. Or role-model. After a few weeks of Buffy's training, the new slayer's had to go through two months re-training. Worse was the stories she told as a way of bonding with the impressionable young girls.

These stories had detrimental effects, particularly in regards to the former Scoobies. The girls often tried to imitate Buffy and that was definitely not of the good. Faith had once had to break a slayers arm to stop the girl from feeding her cheating boy-friend to a vampire. Watchers were complaining that when they tried to stop their Slayer from doing something stupid, their Slayers response was to knock them out and do it anyway. Willow had already hexed three Slayers into frogdom for trying to start fights with her or the Wiccans that she taught. And if Xander caught one more Slayer trying to sneak a vampire into her bed, he was going to start staking the Slayer as well as the vampire.

But what really made Xander mad was how he was disregarded by the Slayers-in-Training after Buffy went though her Power speech. Slayers had it. Witches had it. Even Watchers had it. But Buffy made it clear that Xander didn't, and therefore, didn't count. This time Xander decided to leave rather than getting into an argument defending himself. They had been through it all before and none of it was pleasant. Part of the problem was because when Buffy started putting him down, he retaliated likewise. Her all about power speech was neatly countered by Xander reminding her that the last really big bad she defeated was Angelus. Buffy never fought the Mayor in either of his forms, and the fact that Xander led an army of _powerless_ students against him and also built the bomb that killed him, while Buffy was only the bait, stuck in her craw. Adam was defeated by Buffy, but not by her Slayer powers, no, it took Willow's magic and Giles's knowledge to do that. The only reason Buffy was the center of the enjoining spell was because she could survive being in close proximity to him. Even then, Xander often wondered about the need to engage Adam before the spell was cast.

Buffy's powers were needed against Glory, a Glory that had been weakened by Willow and the Dagon Sphere. Not to mention a senseless fight against the Buffybot. Even then, Buffy needed the Hammer of the Troll-Gods to augment her powers to even bruise Glory. All that combined only tired Glory and got her in position for the _coup de grace_, a eight tonne wrecking ball with a helluva lot of momentum. _That_ hurt Glory, enough that she could no longer defend herself, her immortality the only thing preventing her ultimate demise, until she shifted to Ben and no longer even had that. None of the ideas for stopping Glory came from Buffy herself, except for hit her hard and his personal favorite "I'll kill anyone who goes near Dawn".

It took him awhile, but even Xander realized that it would take something other than power to stop Darth Willow.

Caleb and the First were prime examples of the two flaws that having power had. Caleb showed that while you had power it was limited against someone who had more. Caleb did as he pleased until a greater power was able to be used to take him down. And the First showed how useless power was if you couldn't actually hit your enemy. Xander still wasn't sure that the First had been stopped. Nothing they did should have affected her, him, it, whatever the First is.

All this, when thrown into Buffy's face still wouldn't make her back down and the situation would only degenerate from there. So for once Xander did what he hoped was the smart thing, cashed in his overdue leave and hit the road, so to speak. He was hoping it would be easier to deal with a group of condescending teenage slayers if they hadn't seen him enter into a screaming match with their new hero.

After the train started back up Xander decided a little distraction from his pity party of one was needed, so he grabbed his duffle bag and made his way past the cabins to the dining carriage near the rear of the train. It was when he was sitting down with his newly purchased snackage that he felt it. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled, a remnant response from the hyena spirit within him. There wasn't much of it left in him, but he had learned long ago to accept it for what it was. His inner-animal had sensed something supernatural nearby and was trying to raise it's hackles.

He looked around trying to pin-point the source and his eye settled on a pair of what seemed to be men, sitting further down the carriage and on the other side of the aisle. One brunette and one blonde. He couldn't tell what made them stand out but he trusted his instincts. Not much he could do until he knew exactly what they were, he could tell they weren't vampires from here, so he would have to watch and see. For the moment they were having small arguments with each other, but since it seemed to be of the friendly kind, Xander would have to wait and see. With a sigh, he opened his newspaper, hoping it was nothing he needed to involve himself in.

Thirty minutes later, he was trying to read about a corporate massacre of the bloody kind and trying to ignore the smell of weed. The two supernatural whatever-they-were, had been joined by a couple of stoners. Personally, he was glad that they hadn't decided to join him, because the long-haired stoner talked a lot, loudly and much worse, like an idiot. Where the conversation between the two men had only been loud enough to hear a murmur, since the group had grown Xander could now follow whole conversations. It had been enough to get names though. The long-haired blond stoner was Jay, his chubby, bearded friend was called, thankfully enough, Silent Bob, and the two men under Xander's scrutiny were Bartleby and Loki. Those two names weren't human, but they weren't demonic either. So Xander decided there probably wasn't anything here he needed to keep an eye on.

He continued reading his paper, mostly ignoring the other party as they bantered between themselves and passed their joint around. He did notice one thing though, the fact that while Bartleby and Loki accepted the joint and ducked their heads below the counter like the stoners did, they didn't actually inhale. They pretended like it was affecting them but it seemed like they only did it to not raise attention. Xander was wondering if this told him anything about what they were when a brunette woman walked into the carriage, sniffing the air and frowning.

She walked over to the group and after some brief small talk involving something that in Xander's opinion, was extremely unlikely to happen, sat down. As Xander watched, he couldn't help but smile. Jay, Bob and Loki didn't seem to notice it but slowly and surely, Bethany and Bartleby were separating from the group. Xander smiled to himself when they moved to another seat to talk to each other in private. It was always good to see two people make a connection.

Even though he knew he should respect their privacy, Xander listened in as they talked. So wrapped up in what the other was saying, neither noticed his attention. Even after they started drinking, he listened in, following vicariously what could be the start of something nice. Bethany, he could tell, was being completely honest, and while Bartleby didn't exactly lie, Xander could recognize a euphemism when he heard one. Xander put it down to Bartleby's connection to the supernatural. After nearly a decade in the business, Xander had done as much himself.

It was only when, after some cajoling, and a promise not to laugh, Bethany bowed down and started to tell Bartleby why she was going to New Jersey, that Xander began to worry. It wasn't the subject matter that had his Scooby-sense tingling, it was the look on Bartleby's face. He tried to hide it, schooling his face to one with a lack of emotion, but Xander had spent too much time on the outside looking in to miss it. There was pain and betrayal, despair and fear. As Bethany continued on about Angels and churches, oblivious to Bartleby's reaction, Xander realized that Bartleby and Loki were the Angels she was looking for.

Xander tensed up and prepared to act when he saw Bartleby grip his beer bottle like a weapon, only to have the situation escalate when another man walked in and recognized Bartelby. What followed was confusion. Yelling, screaming, punches were thrown, threats and warnings and insults were shouted, one of the stoners was knocked out and it all ended within minutes, the chubby guy having evicted both the Angels. All without Xander having to involve himself. Xander watched the remaining group as they tended each other, mulling over the events. The remaining group of people had said some things that Xander didn't like the sound of. He didn't have enough information to go on, but it sounded big, end of the world big. The question was, what to do. Common sense told him he should join the group, offer his help and experience.

Of course, sensible wasn't really one of his traits.

Standing up, he pulled his duffle-bag from the overhead, slung it over his shoulder and made his way to the back of the train. He opened the back door and looked out. The two Angels were almost out of sight, the train separating them more by the minute. He looked down at the speeding ground and winced. _God, I miss depth perception. _He had hated doing this in Africa, and he knew he'd hate it now, even as he jumped from the train, angling himself off to the side so he would hit dirt instead of those fucking rocks they like to put around train tracks. He hit the ground rolling, his bag spinning off his shoulder. Coming to a complete stop, he just laid there for a moment, catching his breathe. After a moment, he reached under himself and pulled out a jagged rock, looked at it, then threw it towards it's brethren among the tracks.

Getting up, he retrieved his bag and walked back to the tracks. Casting a last glance at the receding train, he turned and walked briskly the other way, praying that he had made the right choice.

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Okay, there's the start. I know I didn't go into great detail on the Dogma side of things, but this is written on the basis that you've seen the movie and I hate rehashing scenes word for word. From this point it goes AU in the Dogma-verse.

Please Review.


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